AAPOR Cell Phone Task Force

Transcription

1 AAPOR Cell Phone Task Force April 2008 Guidelines and Considerations for Survey Researchers When Planning and Conducting RDD and Other Telephone Surveys in the U.S. With Respondents Reached via Cell Phone Numbers Prepared for AAPOR Council by a Task Force operating under the auspices of the AAPOR Standards Committee, with members including: Paul J. Lavrakas, Task Force Chair Charlotte Steeh, AAPOR Standards Committee Chair Stephen Blumberg, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention John Boyle, Abt SRBI Inc. Michael Brick, Westat Mario Callegaro, Knowledge Networks Howard Fienberg, CMOR Anna Fleeman, Arbitron Donna Gillin, CMOR John Hall, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Scott Keeter, Pew Research Center Courtney Kennedy, U. of Michigan Michael Link, The Nielsen Company Linda Piekarski, Survey Sampling International Chuck Shuttles, The Nielsen Company Trevor Thomson, Associated Press - 1 -

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary 3 Background 7 Considerations Regarding Coverage and Sampling in RDD Surveys 11 Considerations Regarding Nonresponse in Cell Phone Surveys 19 Considerations Regarding Legal and Ethical Issues in Cell Phone Surveys 36 Considerations Regarding Measurement in Cell Phone Surveys 41 Considerations Regarding Weighting in RDD Cell Phone Surveys 44 Best Practices Recommendations 52 References and Additional Readings 54 Glossary

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A volunteer Task Force was established by AAPOR Council shortly after the May 2007 AAPOR conference to prepare a report that would provide survey researchers with information that should be considered when planning and implementing telephone surveys with respondents who are reached via cell phone numbers in the United States. This report is specific to the U.S. because the telecommunication regulatory and business environment that affects cell phone ownership and usage in this country is different than that found in most other countries. This report addresses a great many issues that apply primarily to RDD surveys that sample cell phone numbers, although some of the matters discussed apply to all telephone surveys in the U.S. that reach cell phone numbers. In approaching the charge given to it by AAPOR s Executive Council, the Task Force decided that it was premature to try to establish standards on the issues as it is too soon in the history of surveying respondents in the U.S. reached via cell phone numbers to know with confidence what should and should not be regarded as a Best Practice. Nonetheless, a great deal has been learned during the past six years by those thinking about and conducting such surveys in the U.S. and the Task Force agreed fully that it is time for AAPOR to release information, such as that contained in this report, that identifies a wide range of guidelines and considerations about cell phone surveying in the U.S. Of note, ongoing research has demonstrated that conducting survey interviews by cell phone in the U.S. is feasible, if also somewhat more difficult and more expensive than conducting similar interviews on landline telephones. As part of the process of creating this report, Task Force members met several times via telephone conference calls from June 2007 through January 2008, and established working committees to address each of the following interrelated subject areas: 1. Coverage and Sampling (L. Piekarski, Chair) 2. Nonresponse (A. Fleeman, Chair) - 3 -

4 3. Legal and Ethical Issues (H. Fienberg, Chair) 4. Measurement (S. Keeter, Chair) 5. Weighting (J. Hall, Chair) What follows is a summary of each section of the report: Coverage and Sampling. There are many issues concerning cell phone numbers and sampling frames that researchers must understand in order to evaluate the most appropriate design for telephone surveys in the United States. This section lists several considerations that should be given to the decision of what frame to use when planning to interview people in RDD surveys who are reached on a cell phone. This can be particularly challenging when a survey is less than national in scope. Special care must be taken in deciding how to handle respondents who can be reached via both a cell phone RDD frame and a landline RDD frame. Whether RDD telephone surveys in the U.S. that sample cell phone numbers will need to deploy a within-unit respondent selection technique remains unclear and awaits future research regarding (a) whether it needs to be done and if so, (b) when it should be done and (c) how best to do it. Nonresponse. Nonresponse in RDD cell phone surveys is somewhat greater than in comparable RDD landline surveys in the U.S. Noncontacts and refusals as sources of nonresponse are more somewhat prevalent in cell phone surveys than in landline surveys with comparable numbers of callbacks. However, there are reasons to expect that the proportion of noncontacts in cell phone surveys will decrease over time. In contrast, there are formidable obstacles to addressing the challenges posed by refusals in RDD cell phone surveys that are likely to remain in the foreseeable future. For example, there are many reasons that refusal conversion attempts are less productive with RDD cell phone samples than they are with RDD landline samples. The accurate dispositioning of the numbers in a sample, both on a temporary basis during the field period and on a final basis at the end of the field period, is more - 4 -

5 troublesome with cell phone samples. This in turn makes the calculation of response rates for cell phone surveys more complex and less reliable than with landline surveys. The processing of cell phone samples also requires many new operational considerations that are not faced in processing landline samples, and which further will raise nonresponse if not handled well. All of these challenges related to nonresponse in U.S. cell phone surveys make them significantly more expensive to conduct than comparable landline surveys. Legal and Ethical Issues. Due to federal telecommunication laws and regulations in the U.S., those who conduct surveys with people who are reached on a cell phone must avoid using autodialers (including self-dialing modems and predictive dialers) to place calls, unless they have prior permission of the cell phone owner to do so. This increases the time and cost of processing RDD cell phone samples considerably. Presently, it is not advised that text messages be used to make advanced contact with those sampled at a cell phone number due to federal and state laws on text messaging. From an ethical perspective, the report addresses several cell phone related issues, including how to think about (a) time of day for calling, (b) maximum number of callbacks to attempt and the frequency of callbacks, (c) privacy issues, (d) safety issues, and (e) contacting minors. Measurement. There are two primary measurement issues concerning cell phone surveying. First, there currently is no reliable evidence that the data gathered in good cell phone surveys are of lower quality than in comparable landline surveys. However, the Task Force believes it is advisable that researchers remain attentive to this concern. Future research is needed to know with confidence if, and how, data quality is affected by gathering it from a respondent on a cell phone. Second, many new survey items may be needed for use in adjusting cell phone samples prior to analyzing their data. As discussed in detail in the Weighting Section of the report, the reliability and validity of these new items has not yet been established

6 Weighting. There remain a myriad of important unknowns and uncertainties about the weighting needed to help improve the accuracy of RDD cell phone samples. This section of the report addresses questions that prudent researchers need to consider when thinking about how to weight their RDD cell phone samples. This is the most complex and challenging set of knowledge gaps currently facing U.S. telephone researchers who work with data from RDD cell phone samples. Until reliable methods have been devised, tested, and refined by the survey research community, we will have to accept living with considerable uncertainty and discomfort regarding whether a cell phone survey data set has been made as accurate as it can be through weighting. A particularly troublesome issue here is that there are no reliable population parameters to weight cell phone samples of regional, state, and local areas, as opposed to the nation as a whole. Further troubling is that there are, to our knowledge, no current plans to remedy this information shortfall by gathering such data. Recommendations. In addition to these sections, the Task Force has made three recommendations concerning disclosure. These include the following: (a) researchers should explain the method by which the cell phone numbers used in a survey were selected, (b) if RDD telephone surveys do not sample cell phone numbers, then researchers should provide an explanation of how excluding cell phone owners might affect the survey s results, and (c) researchers should explain the decisions that were made concerning weighting of cell phone samples, including why the sample was not weighted if in fact that was the case. Additional Readings and Glossary. The report ends with additional readings from the small but growing research literature on RDD cell phone surveying in the U.S. and a glossary of terms related to cell phone surveys that may not be familiar to all readers

7 BACKGROUND A volunteer AAPOR Task Force was established by AAPOR Council shortly after the May 2007 AAPOR conference to prepare a report that would provide survey researchers with information that should be considered when planning and implementing telephone surveys with respondents who are reached via cell phone numbers in the United States. This report is specific to the United States because the telecommunication regulatory and business environment that affects cell phone ownership and usage in this country is quite different than that found in most other countries. This report addresses a great many issues that apply primary to RDD surveys that sample cell phone numbers, although some of the matters discussed apply to all telephone surveys in the U.S. that reach cell phone numbers. Prior to working together on the Task Force, 12 of the 16 members had worked together as far back as 2002 on prior initiatives concerning cell phones and telephone survey research in the U.S. In 2003, many of them were part of a group of approximately 25 academic, government, and commercial telephone survey experts who met for a two-day Cell Phone Sampling Summit in New York City which was organized and sponsored by Nielsen Media Research. At this first summit, a wide range of methodological and statistical issues related to cell phone surveying were discussed, with many knowledge gaps identified. Following the 2003 summit, and with the generous support of U.S. Chief Demographer, Chester E. Bowie, a series of questions were added to a 2004 Current Population Survey supplement to gather national data on the types of telephone services that households use. In 2005, the second two-day Cell Phone Sampling Summit was organized by Nielsen with a slightly larger group of U.S. telephone survey sampling experts attending. 1 At that second summit it was decided that the next meeting to address cell phone surveying in the U.S. should be open to all interested survey researchers. This was further discussed at the January 2006 Telephone Survey Methods II 1 See

8 conference in Miami and planning for the open meeting ensued shortly thereafter. What resulted was a three-day mini-conference within the larger 2007 AAPOR conference in Anaheim, CA. 2 This included a half-day short course on cell phone surveys on Wednesday of AAPOR, followed by seven consecutive paper and discussion sessions on Thursday and Friday. All of these meetings were extremely well attended. In addition, AAPOR Council approved the creation of a special issue of Public Opinion Quarterly (Volume 71, Number 5, 2007: Cell Phone Numbers and Telephone Surveying in the U.S.), that was published in December Many of the members of the Task Force helped to conduct blind reviews of articles submitted to the special issue and/or contributed to the articles published in the special issue. In approaching the charge given to it by AAPOR s Executive Council, the Task Force decided that it was premature to try to establish standards on the issues as it is too soon in the history of surveying respondents in the U.S. reached via cell phone numbers to know with confidence what should and should not be regarded as a Best Practice. Nonetheless, a great deal has been learned during the past five years by those thinking about and conducting such surveys in the U.S. and the Task Force agreed fully that it is time for AAPOR to release information such as that contained in this report that identifies a wide range of guidelines and considerations about cell phone surveying in the U.S. As part of the process of creating this report, the Task Force met several times via telephone conference calls from June 2007 through January 2008 and established five working committees to address each of the following interrelated subject areas: 1. Coverage and Sampling (L. Piekarski, Chair) 2. Nonresponse (A. Fleeman, Chair) 2 Considerable appreciation goes to Patricia Moy, Rob Daves, and Frank Newport for their key support of this miniconference as members of AAPOR Council and leaders of the 2007 AAPOR conference program. 3 Considerable appreciation goes to Peter V. Miller, editor of Public Opinion Quarterly, for his consistent and crucial support in seeking approval of this special issue from AAPOR Council

9 3. Legal and Ethical Issues (H. Fienberg, Chair) 4. Measurement (S. Keeter, Chair) 5. Weighting (J. Hall, Chair) Each of the subcommittees created a first draft of their section which was vetted by a meeting of the full Task Force in August Those sections were further revised and were reviewed and then discussed by AAPOR Council at their September 7, 2007 meeting in Washington DC with Lavrakas and three TF members present who also were current AAPOR Council members (Brick, Keeter, and Steeh). Feedback was given by Council to the Task Force and the subcommittees worked in the fall to revise their respective sections to address Council s feedback requesting more details being incorporated in the sections of the report. A third version of the report was vetted in a conference call of the full TF on December 20, Additional revisions were identified and assigned to TF members. A fourth version was vetted by the TF members in January 2008 and this final version of the report reflects that input. Cell phone numbers can enter into telephone samples in several different ways. If the sample is selected from a list, such as members of organizations, or from telephone numbers matched to postal addresses, a researcher may not know whether the number belongs to a cell or a landline phone. Thus list telephone samples, including those developed from addressbased lists, most likely will be a mix of cell phone and landline numbers. In these cases, the inclusion of cell phone numbers has relatively little effect on the sampling process. 4 However, when the method for selecting a telephone sample is Random Digit Dial (RDD), multiple dilemmas face the researcher whether the sample includes only cell phone numbers, only landline numbers, or both. This report addresses these dilemmas and focuses primarily on telephone surveys using RDD samples. 4 In the U.S., all list samples for telephone surveys should be cleaned against cell phone and ported number databases or the researcher may inadvertently violate federal regulations if using an autodialer whenever prior consent to call a cell phone number has not been given by the cell phone owner

10 CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING COVERAGE AND SAMPLING IN RDD SURVEYS U.S. RDD Cell Phone Frames and Types of Telephone Service Frames for generating Random Digit Dial (RDD) samples for conducting surveys of cell phones in the United States are available from most sample suppliers. These frames are lists of all possible wireless telephone numbers and are generally built using industry databases that identify the types of service provided by individual prefixes and 1000-blocks. 5 Three important features of the U.S. RDD cell phone frames are: 1. The data in the frames are administrative and subject to errors (e.g., a number may not be for a cell phone). 2. There are no data on the frame, or in any other file, that accurately identify whether the number is currently working, where the user/owner of the number currently resides, or if the number belongs to a person who lives in a household with a landline. 3. There are no commercially available files with detailed information such as name, address, ZIP code, or demographic information that can be accurately linked to cell phone numbers on the frame. The administrative frame provides a variety of information about prefixes and 1000-blocks such as service provider, rate center location, some rate information, and type of service provided. Below is a list of the types of service that might contain cell phone numbers: 04 = Dedicated to Cellular 50 = Shared between three or more types of service - (Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), Cellular, Paging, Mobile, or miscellaneous) 54 = Shared between POTS and Cellular 55 = Special Billing Option Cellular 58 = Special Billing Option shared between two or more - (Cellular, Paging, Mobile) 5 Telephone numbers in the United States are comprised of 10 digits ( ). The first three numbers, 123, are the area code. The next three numbers, 456, are the prefix or exchange. The last four numbers, 7890, are the local number which can be divided into segments. A thousand block is comprised of 1,000 consecutive numbers starting with the same digit, e.g., starting with 7 ( ). A hundred block is the 100 consecutive numbers starting with the same two digits, e.g., starting with 78 ( )

11 60 = Service provider requests SELECTIVE Local Exchange (IntraLATA Special Billing Option Cellular) 65 = Personal Communications Services (i.e. Sprint) 66 = Shared between POTS and Personal Communications Services 67 = Special Billing Option - PCS / Personal Communications Services 68 = Service provider requests SELECTIVE Local Exchange (IntraLATA Special Billing PCS) Purchasing a U.S. RDD Cell Phone Sample When purchasing a sample of U.S. RDD cell phone numbers, researchers are encouraged to determine how the sample provider s frame has been constructed and approximately what percentage of cell phone numbers in the geographical area to be surveyed are included/excluded by this frame. The following are issues that researchers are encouraged to consider as they think about the RDD cell phone sample they will purchase: Is the frame based on prefixes, 1000-blocks, or 100-blocks? What types of wireless services are included: Dedicated? Shared? Cell? PCS? Special Billing? What is the extent of non-coverage and the extent of overlap between the provider s landline frames and cell frames? What prefixes, 1000-blocks, or 100-blocks are excluded; and why? What prefixes, 1000-blocks, or 100-blocks are duplicated; and why? How are shared service numbers handled? Shared prefixes and shared blocks are those in which different types of service may be mixed at a lower level, such as within 100-blocks. This means that wireless numbers can exist together with landline numbers within a single prefix or 1000-block. What levels of geography are available for sample selection and how have they been determined? County level assignments are generally based on rate center location information, for prefixes or 1000-blocks, as provided by the service providers on

12 administrative databases. Therefore most county based geographies such as State, MSA, and DMA will be available, but sub-county geographies such as ZIP code will not be available. What alternatives are offered for including landline numbers ported to wireless service? Landline numbers ported to wireless service may be included in a landline frame but will not be included in a cell phone frame. Although the wireless number associated with that port is in the wireless frame, it will not connect if dialed directly. It is important to note that NeuStar's Intermodal Ported TN Identification Service license 6 limits use of their data to scrubbing. In other words, it may only be used by a licensee in their efforts to comply with TCPA regulations prohibiting calls to cell phones using automated telephone equipment and may not be used to construct a cell phone frame. (See section on Legal and Ethical Considerations for further details.) Evaluating the Adequacy of the Coverage Provided by U.S. RDD Cell Phone Samples Currently available frames of cell phone numbers in the U.S. can provide excellent national coverage of the U.S. cell phone population. However, many coverage issues need to be considered when designing a cell phone sample, particularly one that is not national in scope. Because of this, it is even more important in cell phone surveys than in landline surveys 6 This database is licensed for the sole purposes of: (1) avoid engaging in TCPA Prohibited Conduct by verifying whether TNs [telephone numbers] are assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call; (2) disclosing, selling, assigning, leasing or otherwise providing the TN Ports to a third party that itself qualifies as a "Customer" under an Intermodal Ported TN Identification Services Agreement for the sole purpose of avoiding TCPA Prohibited Conduct by verifying whether TNs are assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call

13 to determine the residence of each respondent during the interview if this data element is needed for determining survey eligibility or in weighting. The following are additional coverage considerations for the prudent researcher: Most wireless service areas or exchange boundaries are significantly larger than their landline equivalents. This means that it is common to live in a different county than the county in which the cell phone exchange rate center is located. Some research suggests that one-third of cell phone only subscribers do not live in the county associated with their rate center. As a result, defining sample geography by county can result in coverage error when: There are no rate centers located within one or more of the counties to be sampled. An unknown number of subscribers live in a neighboring county that is not included in the sample geography. An unknown number of subscribers live in a county to be sampled, but have telephone numbers in a rate center located in a county that is not being sampled. Different providers have different coverage areas for their service. This means that the geography covered by Provider A in a given community may be smaller or larger than the geography covered by Provider B in the same community. The exchange (prefix) associated with a wireless telephone number represents the original point-of purchase, where the subscriber lived when they originally purchased their service, and may not represent where the subscriber currently lives. Research by Arbitron suggests that in 2005 approximately one-sixth of cell phone only subscribers lived outside the metropolitan area associated with their rate center. This can result in different types of coverage error because:

14 Some subscribers have a phone number provided by an employer or associated with the subscriber s place of business and not associated with the location of his residence. Subscribers can move to a different city or state and keep their telephone number. This can create two types of problems. First, a subscriber can be included in the geography associated with her/his telephone number but in which s/he no longer lives. (This problem can be handled by asking the respondent where s/he lives to determine eligibility.) Second, this same subscriber is not covered in samples of telephone numbers from the geographic area where s/he currently resides. Integrating a sample from an RDD cell phone frame with a sample from an RDD landline frame may be accomplished in several ways, and researchers should fully disclose the methods used. To produce representative estimates, surveys should collect sufficient information from respondents to apply weights that represent the probability of selection of each household and/or respondent. (See section on Weighting Considerations for further details.) Households That Can Be Reached by Both the Cell Frame and Landline Frame Two different sampling approaches have been used to handle situations in which a household in the U.S. can be reached by both a landline and a cell phone. There is, however, no consensus yet on which approach is the best design. Nonscreening approach. This approach involves conducting the interview regardless of the frame from which the household was sampled (i.e., no households are excluded based on their type of telephone access). For these persons who can be interviewed by either landline or

15 cell phone, the methods for determining the probability of selection of each household and/or respondent should be clearly specified in the survey documentation. Screening approach. This approach involves conducting the interview only with people sampled via the cell phone frame who do not have a landline, thus excluding numbers from the cell phone sample in the overlap (i.e., screening out those persons with both a cell phone and a landline). In this alternative sampling design, persons who have at least one household landline telephone and use at least one cell phone would be eligible for inclusion only from the landline frame. Those interviewed via cell phone would be limited to cell phone only persons/households, i.e., ones without a residential landline. Both of these approaches have been used and each has its own set of issues that have not been fully resolved. For example, some proportion of persons who have a landline and a cell phone always, or almost always, answer their cell phone and never, or almost never, answer their landline telephone. These persons are excluded in the sampling design with screening, but very rarely respond if sampled from the landline frame. Similarly, some proportion of persons who have a landline and a cell always, or almost always, answer their landline phone and never, or almost never, turn on their cell telephone except to make an out-going call; (e.g., adults who use their cell phone only for emergencies or only for other out-outbound calling). These persons may be overestimated in the nonscreening sampling design because they rarely or never answer their cell phone number. 7 Therefore, regardless of the sampling approach used, it is recommended that researchers should obtain enough cell phone cases, or cell phone only cases, so that it is not necessary to apply large weights to the cell only cases. 7 Unfortunately, at present the percentage of U.S. residents who engage in these behaviors in unknown, as no reliable national surveys have been reported that measure these approaches to using one s landline and cell phone

16 Within Household Coverage Issues in U.S. RDD Cell Phone Samples Cell phone samples also create sampling issues related to within-household coverage that have not been adequately addressed at this time. These include the following: To what extent are cell phones shared by more than one person in a household and how should these cell phone numbers be handled? 8 How should a cell phone belonging to a non-adult (minor) be treated? Should it be considered out-of-scope or treated in a manner similar to a landline that is answered by a minor? Do researchers need to know, and thus to ask, if the cell phone is a business phone or used as a combination business/personal phone? And, under what circumstances should these conditions cause the number to be out-of-scope? Several different methods of selecting a respondent in cell phone surveys are possible, and include: 1. Select the person who answers the phone, with no screening for others who possibly use the phone. 2. Select the person who is the primary user of the phone, with screening for the primary user. 3. Randomly, or at least systematically, select a respondent from among all the eligible users (e.g., all adults) of the cell phone, after screening for how many eligible people use the phone and making sure that all these people do in fact qualify as being eligible to be surveyed. 4. Randomly, or at least systematically, select from among all eligible persons in a household if this is a household study, regardless of whether all these people use the 8 Unfortunately, at present the percentage of Americans who engage in these behaviors in unknown, as no reliable national surveys have been reported that measure cell phone sharing

17 cell phone on other occasions, with screening for the number of eligible household members. Future research will be needed to determine whether Methods 2 and 3 (above) are superior to Method 1. Method 4 would be chosen only when respondents represent households rather than just themselves. Method 4 might also be appropriate when both cell phone and landline numbers are included in the same survey. There is an additional consideration related to within-household selection. In cell phone surveys, the person who answers the phone will turn out to be the respondent the majority of the time. If the introduction of a cell phone survey is of shorter duration than is common in a landline survey, the interviewer will be able to start the substance of the questionnaire more quickly. This may help reduce refusals that otherwise might occur because of the time it takes after initial contact to start the interview. As a consequence, any procedures to improve withinhousehold coverage, by not always interviewing the person who initially answers the cell phone, likely will increase the refusal rate in cell phone surveys

18 CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING NONRESPONSE IN CELL PHONE SURVEYS One of the most problematic features of general population RDD cell phone surveys in the U.S. is their low response rates consistently below 30 percent and overall about 10 percentage points less than in current landline surveys. Three distinct dimensions of this problem are addressed in this section: 1. The sources of nonresponse in RDD cell phone surveys. 2. What current research suggests may be effective operational strategies to reduce it. 3. How the AAPOR telephone response rate formulae can be modified to account for the unique features of cell phone interviewing. Sources of Nonresponse The reasons for low response rates in RDD cell phone surveys involve the same components that account for nonresponse in RDD landline surveys -- noncontact, refusals, other noninterviews, and undetermined eligibility. However, these components play different roles and have different impacts on overall nonresponse in an RDD cell phone survey compared to an RDD landline survey. Noncontacts When considering only noncontacted numbers confirmed as working (i.e., ones that ring but never have been answered by an actual person), the empirical evidence to date suggests that they make up approximately the same proportion of final dispositions in both RDD landline and RDD cell phone surveys provided the number of call attempts is sufficiently large (> 5). The tendency for cell phone owners to constantly carry their cell phones with them means that they are potentially accessible to interviewers in a much wider variety of settings and for a greater part of their waking hours than in a landline survey. As more and more people think of the cell

19 phone as their primary phone, the noncontact component of nonresponse in RDD cell phone surveying is expected to decrease. For the same reason, however, the noncontact component may well increase in RDD landline surveys. Refusals Refusals are a main source of nonresponse in RDD cell phone as they are in RDD landline surveys, especially those survey that use many callbacks. However, in several mode comparison studies conducted between 2003 and 2006, the refusal rate in the RDD cell phone survey exceeded the rate in the comparable RDD landline survey by five to 20 percentage points. Given the structure of the telephone system in the U.S., it is easy to understand why refusals are more numerous when the mode of contact is a cell phone. Reasons for this include: 1. Many owners appear to think of the cell phone as a private and personal form of communication and have tended to share their cell number only with family and close friends, if at all. There is empirical evidence (as well as myriad anecdotal experience) that supports this assertion. In response to an open-ended question about whether they would mind being called on their cell phones by a research organization, respondents in a 2003 survey frequently mentioned invasion of privacy as a primary reason for being opposed. As one respondent replied, my [cell] phone is for personal use, not for annoying people to call me on. Or as another respondent said, It's private. I don't give the number to anybody. Thus the response to an interviewer s cold call may mix surprise with hostility and thus lead to an immediate, flat-out refusal. However, it is expected that the more often people use their cellular phones, the less likely they will hold this attitude. Although these respondents illustrative comments were made five years ago, U.S. cellular numbers

20 still are not listed in any public directory, attesting to the pervasiveness of the feeling that the cell phone provides private communication. 2. The called party is charged for a cell phone call. Even though U.S. service providers now offer a number of different calling plans that provide varying levels of free minutes, many potential cell phone respondents will incur costs and so will be likely to refuse immediately. This problem is exacerbated by not being able to send advance mailings with some form of remuneration to the owners of sampled RDD cell phone numbers prior to calling them in order to warm them up, as can be done with RDD landline numbers that are matched to household addresses. 3. The variety of settings in which a cell phone owner might receive a call also generates refusals. If a potential respondent is in a restaurant, driving a car, or engaged in any activity not conducive to a telephone conversation with a stranger, the request for an interview might be met with a hasty No and a hang-up, before the interviewer even has a chance to mention rescheduling the call. 4. It is more difficult to convert refusals when the mode of administration is a cell phone than with a landline telephone. This is because interviewers trying to convert initial refusals are likely to reach the same person over and over again, rather than someone else within the household who may be more willing to participate (as often happens when the mode is a landline telephone). Taking all of these factors into account, one is led to the conclusion that high refusal rates and thus low response rates -- will plague RDD surveys of persons in the U.S. contacted via their cell phone for the foreseeable future. However, as the cell phone grows in popularity, the reaction that an interviewer has invaded users privacy is anticipated to become less intense. Although U.S. service providers have begun to reduce the costs associated with receiving calls on a cellular phone, movement to date in that direction has been slow. Were this rate of change to accelerate, this cause of refusals should lessen. In addition, survey

21 methodologists should be able to devise more effective refusal avoidance strategies that are better targeted at sampled cell phones owners, thereby better preventing refusals in the first moments of contact. Nevertheless, although some of the conditions that foster high refusal rates in cell phone surveys may ameliorate over time, refusals are expected to remain substantial because RDD cell phone surveys are exposed not only to unique circumstances, but also to the same influences that are driving down response rates in standard RDD landline surveys. Other Noninterviews This component of nonresponse consists of two types of failure to achieve participation: 1. The intended respondent cannot physically or mentally participate in an interview, speaks a different language from the interviewer, and/or will not be available throughout the survey field period. 2. The intended respondent has other reasons for not being able to participate at the specific time(s) when interviewers call. Overall, nonresponse due to these factors has remained low in RDD cell phone surveys and is equivalent to that observed in RDD landline surveys provided the level of effort includes multiple callbacks. In the future, the other noninterview component is expected to remain relatively constant and continue to be the smallest and least problematic component of nonresponse among cell phone owners in RDD surveys. Undetermined Eligibility In RDD landline telephone surveys, a proportion of the selected sample ends in an ambiguous region between definitely working and definitely not working, and if it is working, uncertainty often remains as to whether it is a residential number. At the end of the survey s field period these numbers are given a final status of unknown or undetermined eligibility

22 The size of this Undetermined Eligibility component is likely to be much larger in an RDD cell phone survey than in an RDD landline survey because cell phone numbers are not as easily identified as being definitely ineligible for the following reasons: 1. Many business cellular numbers also are used for personal communication. As a result, fewer cell numbers can be classified as ineligible because they are used solely for business or commercial purposes. As such, distinguishing between residential and commercial numbers is more problematic and less reliable in RDD cell phone surveys, and there is no easy method for determining whether a given cell number has reached an eligible respondent on a personal cell phone. 2. Many owners do not use their cell phones on a regular basis. They may turn them on only in emergencies or only when they want to make another outbound call. This practice leaves the working status of a great many RDD cell phone numbers in doubt at the end of the field period. 3. The turnover of cell numbers what the telecommunications industry refers to as churn is greater for cell phones than for landlines. This increases the chances that a sample number will not be properly classified by the service provider as nonworking. 4. The plethora of operator messages in the U.S., which differ by provider, often are unclear and confusing. As a result, it often is very difficult for an interviewer to decide whether, in fact, the number is truly ineligible. Table 1 presents some examples of common operator messages that are highly ambiguous as to whether a cell phone number is working or not working

23 Table 1. Examples of Ambiguous Cell Phone Operator Messages Please hold until the Nextel client you are trying to reach is located. The number or code you dialed is incorrect. Please check the number or code and try again. The cellular phone you have called is turned off or out of the service area; please try your call again This number is not accepting calls at this time. Future developments may help to reduce the unknown eligibility problem in RDD cell phone surveys. The industry is consolidating, so with fewer U.S. companies the jumble of operator messages eventually should result in clearer and more standardized wording. Most encouraging, is the expectation that the sporadic use of cell phones will decline as more individuals come to rely on the technology. With the passing of the current generation of oldest adults in the coming decades, it is anticipated that a greater proportion of those with cell phones will leave them on most of the time. For these reasons, the component of nonresponse due to an inability to determine a number s working status is expected to decline in importance and have less impact on an RDD cell phone survey s overall response rate. Differential Nonresponse among Cell Phone Only Respondents A final aspect for understanding nonresponse in cell phone samples concerns a form of differential nonresponse that occurs within cell phone surveys. In 2007, the proportion of completed interviews with cell phone only respondents in U.S. national cell phone surveys tended to be at least twice as high as the estimated percentage of cell phone only adults within the general adult population. This suggests that (a) contact rates are substantially higher for

24 cell phone only respondents compared to cell phone respondents with landline lines and/or (b) refusal rates are substantially lower for cell phone only respondents than for cell phone respondents with landline lines. This has important implications for both the efficiency of sampling cell phone only adults in cell phone samples as well as the representativeness of unweighted samples from cell phone surveys. Operational/Logistical Considerations Related to Unit- and Item-Nonresponse in Cell Phone Surveying Contacting and interviewing respondents via their cell phone involves a number of operational considerations which differ from contacting and interviewing a person over a landline. These considerations apply regardless of whether an RDD frame is used or a list frame. These include place-shifting (respondents are no longer reached only in their homes, but may be located outside of the home as well) and associated concerns for respondent safety; increased respondent burden (particularly when respondents incur a financial cost for responding by cell phone); and the potential for behavioral differences in terms of how respondents use their cell phones and respond to survey requests and questions over these devices. While research in these and related areas is on-going, the body of empirical evidence from which to craft optimal procedures for reducing nonresponse in cell phone surveys is thin; i.e., much remains unknown. With this in mind, the operational considerations and procedures outlined below are meant to serve as guideposts until more definitive findings in these areas become available

25 Respondent Safety Because of the mobile nature of cell phones, a cell phone respondent may put herself/himself at risk when speaking to a survey interviewer in ways that do not occur in landline surveys. As such, researchers should consider having their interviewers trained to be on alert to readily mention the possibility of calling back at another (safer) time, possibly even on a landline telephone. A separate temporary disposition code might be used for these instances to allow sample managers the ability to better track and address these cases. (More discussion of respondent safety appears in the section on Legal and Ethical Issues.) Data Quality and Item Nonresponse Many users of cell phones appear very willing to talk in all kinds of locations, including public and semi-private places, in which they are seemingly oblivious of those around them. Nevertheless, compared to a survey respondent reached on a landline, a respondent reached on a cell phone may be more likely to consciously or unconsciously limit the candor/openness, and thus the completeness and accuracy, of her/his responses depending on the sensitivity of the research questions (e.g., health, finances, crime, and other sensitive topics; income, age, and other demographic data; etc.). As such, whenever it is appropriate and based on the nature of the topics being surveyed, researchers should consider having interviewers determine whether the respondent on a cell phone is in an environment that is conducive to providing full and accurate answers to all of the questions being asked. If this is not the case, interviewers should be trained to know when to schedule a callback. To further promote candor, reduce item nonresponse, and avoid disclosure of sensitive information, questionnaires for cell phone surveys should be carefully evaluated so that even if the question wording is sensitive the response categories may be able to be designed to protect the privacy of the information from someone who might overhear them being spoken by a cell phone respondent

26 Questionnaire Length Although many of the current RDD cell phone surveys in the U.S. appear to have been planned with questionnaires that take an average of approximately 10 minutes to complete, interviews in a large statewide survey on health behaviors took an average of 30 minutes to complete. Thus, to date, there is no evidence that cell phone interviews always have to be extremely short (e.g., five or fewer minutes), nor for that matter do they always need to be shorter than their landline counterparts in surveys that include both those reached via a landline and those reached via a cell phone. However, because people speaking on their cell phone more often are under special time constraints than when speaking on a landline, survey researchers should take this into account when planning a cell phone questionnaire. Thus, researchers should consider explicitly whether the length of an interview that is conducted on a cell phone should be shorter in duration than one conducted on a landline. Calling protocols In the RDD cell phone studies that have been conducted to date, exceptionally long field periods and a large numbers of call attempts were found to increase the contact rates and lessen the unknown eligibility rates. In RDD cell phone surveys with very short interviewing periods and a limited number of call attempts, noncontact rates and unknown eligibility rates have been found to be much greater. For example, in one experiment, when the number of call attempts was limited to four, the noncontact rate approximately doubled (Steeh, Buskirk, and Callegaro, 2007). Although higher response rates may be achievable by making additional callbacks to cell phone respondents, the personal nature of the cell phone suggests the need for caution in this area. To reduce the potential for overburdening the cell phone respondent pool, it is

27 recommended that the total number of call attempts be limited to a modest number (in the range of six to 10 call attempts) in comparison to the greater number of attempts often used when surveying landline telephone numbers. As with landline surveys, calls should be attempted at different days of the week and times of the day. Cell phone surveys carried out to date have used different calling protocols. These have included calling mainly during early evenings and on weekends when most users have free service; but some studies suggest that contact and cooperation may not be that different across the different day-parts. More research is required, however, to determine the optimal calling pattern across different days and time slots. Furthermore, because cell phones can be in use in geopolitical areas other than where the cell phone s area code is located (e.g., a respondent is away on business or vacation, or simply has moved to another location), calling windows may need to be modified to reduce the chances of reaching a respondent who has moved to, or is currently in, a different time zone at a time considered too early or too late for calling there. At present, it is unclear what percentage of the U.S. cell phone population may be affected by this consideration, but it is likely to grow over time. Compared to the standard protocol of allowing a landline number to ring at least six times before coding it a Ring No Answer (RNA), interviewers should allow the cell phone to ring a minimum of eight times before assigning an RNA or other disposition code for that contact attempt. It often takes as many as eight rings before a cell phone s voice mail starts up, so not waiting for the extra rings would adversely affect the performance of the sample whether in quantifying true RNAs or in the ability to leave voic messages. Initial research has shown that in the event of a missed call, cell phone users are more likely than landline users to attempt to recontact the number that appears on their Caller ID. As a result, researchers should consider the need for the telephony infrastructure of the survey research calling center to handle such inbound calls. Ideally, the phone number that displays

28 on the cell phone s Caller ID should be able to be redialed by the respondent and reach an inbound line on which an interview can be conducted. In turn, calling centers should be prepared and able to schedule a future date and time to call back a respondent who has called into the call center if it is not possible to conduct the interview at the time of the inbound call from the respondent. Further, at the respondent s request, interviewers need to be able to enter an alternative telephone number (typically a landline number) into the CATI system at which to attempt the recontact. Voic Messages Leaving a voic message on the first call attempt to a cell phone can act as the important pre-alert of the survey request. This may be particularly important given that addresses are not currently available for matching to U.S. cell phone numbers, thereby precluding the use of advance contact letters by mail that is possible with landline surveying. In addition, researchers should decide whether interviewers should leave a callback number in this message because the outbound number that appears on the cell phone s Caller ID may not be valid for an inbound callback. Text Messaging In theory, an advance text message to a cell phone number might serve the same purpose as an advance letter mailed to a landline respondent. However, legal barriers currently exist in the U.S. to sending unsolicited text messages. Before the new U.S. laws were enacted, some researchers incorporated advance text messaging into their survey designs. Although the results suggested that sending a text message did not increase cooperation rates, knowing whether the message was actually delivered to a cell phone helped to reduce the cases of unknown eligibility. If the legal landscape in the U.S. happens to change, advance text